Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gday Dave

>Matt wrote:
>>
>> In searching for answers for my own question, I have found a very good
>> example of interrupted wayyiqtols (with no verbs of motion). 2 Sam 11.17
>> has:
>>
>>      wayyillachamu           'et-yo'ab       wayyapol
>min-ha`am ...
>>      and they battled        Joab            and they fell
>some of the people
>>      wayamot         gam     'uriyyah.
>>      and he died     also    Uriah.
>>
>> It is quite impossible that there was a battle THEN some of the army died
>> THEN Uriah died! Do you think these wayyiqtols are "functionally"
>> imperfective? If not, what are they aspectually?


>I don't think aspect is in view.  Aspect in Hebrew depends on
>context and the meanings of the verbs used.

Which sort of "aspect" are you talking about? "Context and meaning of the
verbs used" sounds like Aktionsart. I am talking about Perfectivity, an
independent but related grammatical category. If wayyiqtol grammaticises
perfectivity, the example above needs more explanation as it relates two
situations that (it is highly reasonable to assume) occur *within* the
temporal development of the first situation (the battle).

>
>and If so, how would the
>> reader know not to link these sequentially, or to see them as perfective.
>
>The reader would know not to link these sequentially because a
>native speaker would have known that the wayyiqtol is not
>sequential.

Do you follow Comrie then in taking sequentiality as implicature? Hatav
argues that sequentiality is grammaticised in Hebrew in the wayyiqtol form,
but examples like the above also present problems for this view.

The wayyiqtol is the simple clause: "They did battle.
>Some people fell.  Uriah also died."  There are no syntactic
>dependencies or other types of connection (temporal, causal,
>result, apposition), each clause says what it says.  Doing battle is
>an inherently non-perfective action, so the aspect is contained in
>the meaning of the verb.

Again I think that there is mismatch of terminology here. TO BATTLE is
dynamic, non-telic, and controlled by the Agent, so its Aktionsart is
Activity (or as you wrote Action). But perfectivity is independent of this
and not inherent. An imperfective view of a battle would be the soldier's
view, a perfective view would be the historians. So Aktionsart is contained
in the verb (more strictly in the predicate, since TO DO BATTLE FOR 3 DAYS
is telic, and THE STORM BATTLED THE FOREST is not Agentive etc).

The presentation of the battle in this example seems to me to be from the
soldier's view (imperfective) as it recounts changes in the internal
development of the battle as it progresses.


Some people were killed, Uriah among
>them.  These are events that are inherently perfective (the act of
>dying tends to have a definite terminus) so their aspect is
>contained in the meanings of the verbs, as well.

Perfective should be distinguished from telicity.


In the context, the
>people falling and Uriah dying clearly happened during the battle,
>so context tells us that these things happened before the terminus
>of the battle.  None of this is contained in the syntax of the
>wayyiqtol.

How then would Hebrew writers write, "There was a battle. Then some people
died (post-war syndrome?). Then Uriah died."? You seem to have bleached the
wayyiqtol of all semantic function. If it does not grammaticise aspect or
tense, what does it do? What relationship does it have to the deictic
centre? It seems like a *great* amount of implicature is being placed on
wayyiqtol.

>
>> Why isn't the Hebrew, wayhi behillachem wayyapol ...?
>
>Without asking the author we can't be sure, but I suspect that the
>rapid-fire change of verbal subjects may have something to do with
>it.  The soldiers came out of the city, engaged Joab in battle, some
>Israelites fell, Uriah died also.  Bing, bang, boom.  Considering
>what David told Joab to do to Uriah, this quick run-down of the
>action following the siege tells us in very blunt language and
>structure that David's plan to get rid of Uriah worked just the way
>he planned it.

But then if Joab is cancelling the converstional implicature by using three
wayyiqtols, doesn't that mean that on a normal interpretation three
wayyiqtols would be perfective? If this is normal Hebrew for this sort of
recounting of events, then how can anything be read into Joab's use of the
verb forms?

However, I have also thought of an alternative explanation that combines
your observations about the context (Aktionsart) and perfectivity. Concepts
such as "battles", "meetings", "carnivals" etc tend to be seen as single
"events" just like "explosions" "drinking tea" etc. Such complex events have
unusual syntactical properties, and I think this may solve our problems.

Such complex events can introduce a temporal frame, such as the adverbial
"In the year 1980, ...". In this the idea is, "And there was a battle, and
in the battle ...". Dahl argues that R, E, and S time are insufficient to
account for tense distinctions, and that one must include in many cases an
F-time (temporal frame). So the battle is conceived of as perfective, as a
single event in the past, but because of its verbal semantics, it introduces
a temporal frome into which other perfective events can be inserted. I would
further argue (but this is not necessary) that this only works if the
speaker and reader know that a particular predicate can be used to introduce
a temporal frame. For example, if I said, using the same verb-forms
throughout,

1a.      I went to the carnival. And I bought some candy-floss. And I rode a
pony.
1b.     I went to the ticket-booth. And I bought a bus-ticket. And I caught a
bus.

Because of the semantics of "carnival" you would assume that the buying and
riding in 1a occured *during* the carnival, but in 1b you would assume that
the buying and riding occured *after*.

With regards,
Matthew